Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
---|---|---|
Searching... Stayton Public Library | JF BEASLEY | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Monmouth Public Library | J Fic Beasley, C. 2015 | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Newberg Public Library | J FICTION BEASLEY | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Salem Main Library | J Beasley, C. | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Sheridan Public Library | J Beasley | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
A New York Times Book Review Notable Children's Book of 2015
A New York Times Bestseller
Fans of The Magician's Elephant , Savvy , and Roald Dahl will fall in love with Circus Mirandus, which celebrates the power of seeing magic in the world.
Do you believe in magic?
Micah Tuttle does.
Even though his awful Great-Aunt Gertrudis doesn't approve, Micah believes in the stories his dying Grandpa Ephraim tells him of the magical Circus Mirandus: the invisible tiger guarding the gates, the beautiful flying birdwoman, and the magician more powerful than any other--the Man Who Bends Light. Finally, Grandpa Ephraim offers proof. The Circus is real. And the Lightbender owes Ephraim a miracle. With his friend Jenny Mendoza in tow, Micah sets out to find the Circus and the man he believes will save his grandfather.
The only problem is, the Lightbender doesn't want to keep his promise. And now it's up to Micah to get the miracle he came for.
Author Notes
Cassie Beasley is from rural Georgia, where, when she's not writing, she helps out on the family pecan farm. She earned her MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Circus Mirandus is her first novel.
Reviews (6)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 4-6-Fifth-grader Micah Tuttle has been living with his Grandpa Ephraim since his parents died when he was very young. The two are close; Grandpa Ephraim teaches Micah how to tie complicated knots and tells him fanciful tales about the magical Circus Mirandus and its many performers, including a powerful illusionist called the Lightbender. When Grandpa Ephraim becomes gravely ill, his sister, the strict and dour Aunt Gertrudis, comes to take care of the household. She severely limits Micah's time with his sick grandfather, and the boy is distraught at the idea of losing the only important person in his life. In a stolen moment, Grandpa Ephraim surprises Micah by revealing that the Circus Mirandus is real, and that the Lightbender promised him a miracle when he was a child. The protagonist begins to hope that his grandfather will get well. The Circus Mirandus arrives in town on the wind, and Micah, with the help of his classmate Jenny Mendoza, seeks out the Lightbender and tries to retrieve the miracle that Grandpa Ephraim has requested. During a whirlwind adventure in the Circus, Micah learns about his family and discovers that the miracle that Grandpa Ephraim asked for might not be the one that Micah had in mind. Circus Mirandus is not a simple story, but readers will be rewarded for delving into its intricacies. VERDICT This gripping fantasy tale will have readers hooked from the opening scene to the breathtaking-and unexpected-conclusion.-Sarah Reid, Broome County Public Library, Binghamton, NY © Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Fifth grader Micah Tuttle has grown up on his grandfather's stories of the magical Circus Mirandus, but when Grandpa Ephraim gets sick, the parentless Micah and his friend Jenny try to find the circus, learning just how much power there can be in illusion. Beasley fills her middle-grade novel with over-the-top characters-elderly folk, young kids, magical circus performers, haughty and evil villainesses, talking circus animals-and reader Pinchot sinks his teeth into them all. The wicked aunt is creaky and growly. The loving grandfather is warm and twinkling. The children are enthusiastic and hopeful. Pinchot does a terrific impersonation of a talking parrot. The stakes are high, the action is wild, the resolution satisfying; Pinchon embodies the whimsy of the text, yet he also takes it seriously. He narrates with a sense of wonder in his voice that makes the magic of the book come alive. Ages 9-12. A Dial hardcover. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Micah lives with his grandpa Ephraim, who regales him with stories of the amazing Circus Mirandus and its magical leader, the Lightbender. But now that Ephraim is dying and unimaginative Aunt Gertrudis is taking over Micahs care, it seems that the Circus might actually be real. Beasleys first novel succeeds in tone, suspense, and inventiveness of the magical setting, but her invented world feels more convincing than her real one, and the highly allegorical character and narrative arcs never get far beyond obvious hints and platitudes: Do you realize that magic as we know it is fading? Do you realize that [we] are fighting to keep enchantment alive in the world? You say the children arent special, but they are. They are the key to everything. The reader may not be sure why this matters, but may believe it does, and a promised sequel might hold the answers. Beasley has talent in crafting energy on the page but has not yet succeeded in telling a fully realized story. nina lindsay (c) Copyright 2015. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
One strange afternoon, 10-year-old Micah Tuttle finds out that magic is real. Micah always thought Grandpa Ephraim's wild stories of the centuries-old Circus Mirandus were spun solely for his amusement. But when his dying grandfather writes a letter to the "Lightbender," hoping to call in the miracle the magician had promised him as a boy, Micah learns the stories were true, and the appearance of Ms. Chintzy, the circus' cantankerous parrot messenger, clinches the deal. Happily, Micah finds a loyal if somewhat challenging friend to help him track down the elusive light-bending magician: the magic-leery, science-minded Jenny Mendoza. Their budding rapport is nuanced and complex, a refreshing illustration of how absolute like-mindedness is not a prerequisite for friendship. On one level, the book is a fantastical circus romp, with fortunetelling vultures and "a wallaby that could burp the Greek alphabet." On another, it's both serious and thick with longing: Micah's ache for the companionship of his once-vital guardian-grandfather; Grandpa Ephraim's boyhood yearning for his absent father, as fleshed out in flashbacks; the circus founders' desire to keep enchantment alive in a world where "faith is such a fragile thing." A delicious confection and much more: it shows that the human heart is delicate, that it matters, and that it must be handled with care. (Fiction. 9-12) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Micah's parents died when he was just a toddler, and now he happily lives with Grandpa Ephraim, who tells him fantastic stories, the best of which are about Circus Mirandus, a circus kids can only attend if they believe in magic. When Ephraim was a boy, he came upon the magical circus and met the Man Who Bends Light, who was so impressed by Ephraim's knot-tying skills that he promised him a miracle. Now, many years later, Ephraim is dying, and Micah is determined to make sure he gets his miracle. Joined by his skeptical, brilliant friend Jenny, Micah seeks out Circus Mirandus to see its wonders for himself and to confront the Lightbender, though in the process, he learns more about himself than he ever expected. Debut author Beasley has built an imaginative world in evocative, painterly prose, particularly the circus, and she's filled it with compellingly multifaceted characters. Some elements don't quite knit together, but with a sequel in the works, don't be surprised if those loose ends tie up nicely.--Hunter, Sarah Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Children witness fantastical events at a theme park and a mysterious carnival in two middle-grade novels. CIRCUS MIRANDUS By Cassie Beasley Illustrated by Diana Sudyka 292 pp. Dial. $17.99. (Middle grade; ages 8 to 12) RETURN TO AUGIE HOBBLE Written and illustrated by Lane Smith 283 pp. Roaring Brook Press. $16.99. (Middle grade; ages 8 to 12) SO ALL THE world's a stage, and we are merely players hoofing upon it? I bet Shakespeare picked up that nugget at Stratford-upon-Avon Middle School. Middle school ushers in the Narcissistic Age, a mannerist phase that comes between the magic years of learning to read and the disheartening Enlightenment that occurs between early high school and, say, midlife crisis. An Enlightenment that has to take in the reality of death. In different ways, and with equally surprising success, two new novels for middle-grade readers raise the curtain on such mysteries. Mind, the curtain is not just a reviewer's figure of speech - what is a figure of speech but a small theatrical event, anyway? In both novels, the spectacle of live performance sets up considerations of mortality. Cassie Beasley's smoky "Circus Mirandus," a beguiling first novel, begins when Ephraim Tuttle, near his deathbed, writes to a circus artist called the Lightbender, hoping to call in a favor promised some decades earlier. The Circus Mirandus is - well, what is it? A carnival of the child's mind? An apparition slipped sideways out of one of P. L. Travers's stories of Mary Poppins? It's more than a symbol, but I doubt it files tax returns. The Circus is an ineffable arena of magic that appears on the sidelines of children's lives, in the selvage plots that surround all towns. It seems a kind of curing ground where certain children can tune to a sense of numinousness in their own lives. But beyond this I cannot say. The Circus Mirandus is a mystery locus, and much is both unexplained and cunningly undescribed. Make what you will - I think that's the point - of the circus, and of your own life. Ephraim's grandson, Micah Tuttle, is a fifth grader struggling with a school project while a disagreeable great-aunt comes to help out. Micah makes common cause with his partner, Jenny Mendoza, who cannot believe in the magic of the circus but gamely listens to Micah's protestations of faith about it. The novel alternates the story of Ephraim's childhood experience of the Circus Mirandus with Micah's attempts to cash in the wish that his grandfather has deferred claiming. What strikes me as notable is the confidence in tone. Beasley relies on reticence in describing magic; the whole book has the quality of an extended dream, a David Lynch episode as seen through a happier camera. But reality vests in Beasley's exquisite writing about tiny, observed moments. "As the minutes dragged by, the quiet started to itch." "Micah felt like a kite with a cut string." "'Now,' murmured Grandpa Ephraim. 'Let's be here together for as long as we have.... Then, when the time comes, we'll all let go.'" The incomparable Lane Smith, the author and illustrator of "Grandpa Green" and the illustrator of "The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales," stomps triumphantly into the middleschool playground with his first novel, "Return to Augie Hobble." The nonchalant first-person narrative drives along with short sentences, short paragraphs, silliness both of language and situation - and Smith's antic, anarchic illustrations. Hugely normal and appealing Augie Hobble (like Micah, also late on a school project) lives on the periphery of his father's rundown amusement park, Fairy Tale Place, where employees are kitted out in character. But something supernatural is hinted at in the jokes: "Everyone knows the urban legend of Walt Disney being frozen, so if you give a show a title like 'Disney on Ice' you're just asking for it." I won't spoil the plot - it's too good - but I'll say that intimations of werewolf possession are all the more arresting when told in tones of schoolboy snark. (Who can blame Augie? He attends Gerald R. Ford Middle School.) "Last scene of all,/That ends this strange eventful history,/Is second childishness and mere oblivion." So, in "As You Like It," Shakespeare concludes Jaques's speech about the many parts a human may play in one life. Yet oblivion has not been the fate of his poetry. Middle schoolers have much to learn about the benefit of words of blessing from those who have died. These two books magically light the way from stage to stage. GREGORY MAGUIRE is the author of "Egg & Spoon" and a forthcoming novel for adults, "After Alice."